mason@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Mason) (05/19/84)
I have been thinking about sexism & have a question for the net.
What would be the result if for the first n (5<=n<=15) years of your
childrens' lives you did not publicly acknowledge which sex your child
was? Would they grow up with the best of both worlds? the worst?
no difference? royally screwed up?
This would of course require great fortitude on the part of parents:
Finding baby clothes that weren't pink or blue.
An answer to the standard adult response to meeting the baby: "How cute.
Is it a boy or a girl?" would have to be found.
(I favour: "I don't consider that relevant.")
Grandparents would be particularly difficult.
Either non-sexed names would have to be found or the initial used as
a nick name. (Vee instead of Vanessa or Victor)
Note that I am not suggesting that the child would be unaware of hes
sex. (Although that is another variable that might be considered)
This of course is a natural consequence to my view that there is little
hope for real equality between the sexes within the current society
because of the massive indoctrination of children while their minds
are young and fertile. I welcome discussion of this as well, but before
you flame think for a moment about the expectations your parents/society
had/has for you.
--
Usenet: {dalcs dciem garfield musocs qucis sask titan trigraph ubc-vision
utzoo watmath allegra cornell decvax decwrl ihnp4 uw-beaver}
!utcsrgv!mason Dave Mason, U. Toronto CSRG
CSNET: mason@Toronto
ARPA: mason%Toronto@CSNet-Relaykim@emory.UUCP (Kim Wallen {Psychology}) (05/19/84)
There seems to be a great difference between bringing children up in a nonsexist environment and an asexual environment. I don't understand the motivation to deny either a male or a female a whole set of very important characters. Males and females do differ in very important ways. There is little point in rearing a male for his possible pregnancy or preparing a female for when her voice deepens and she starts to have nocturnal emissions. This is not to say that the reproductive capacities of males and females should determine toys, books, clothing etc, but to deny that these rather dramatic differences exist would only create great confusion for a male or female. If you want to see rigid distinctions based soley on sex talk to a 3-5 year old. When kids first learn that there are two sexes it can be a scary thing for them and they deal with that by rigidly defining what makes males and females different. This starts to disappear when they get old enough that they are secure in their sexual identity. Then they can tolerate a greater variance in what defines a sex. As a last comment. I have had several friends who have been frustrated in their attempts to raise their kids (mainly girls) in an asexual environment as the kids seem to develop very sex-specific ideas. You may argue that this comes from society at large and some probably does, but I don't think one should ignore that ones sex is an important defining characteristic to the individual. Kids are trying to learn a whole bunch of fine distinctions and to send them the message that the large difference they can see between males and females means nothing (or is not relevant) would seem to be rather confusing. I think a better approach is to let the kid know their sex from the beginning and teach them all of the aspects of being that sex, but always communicate to them that their potential is unlimited by their sex. Instead of trying to force our views on the kid, help him/her with her fears, concerns, and pay attention to what the child wants. Maybe your little girl really doesn't like trucks, but loves dolls. Maybe it is the other way around. Expose the child to many opportunities, but listen to what s/he says. I guess I'm not interested in doing a sociology experiment with my kid's psyche. Kim Wallen;Psychology Department;Emory University;Atlanta, GA !akgua!emory!emoryu1!psykw
boylan@dicomed.UUCP (Chris Boylan) (05/20/84)
{not needed}
If you are interested in non-sexist upbringing, perhaps you should
read "Growing Up Free" by Letty Cotter Pobegrin. I read the book several
years ago (although I have no children) and found it both enjoyable and thought provoking. (It is also well referenced).
The book deals with many of the issues suggested in the article by
Dave Mason (pink vs blue, genderless names) as well as nonsexist-toys
and books,etc.
Personally I am not sure that concealing the child's sex is the way to solve
the problem, although I do agree that the societal expectations of male vs
female behavior begin early. From my own experience (as achild not a parent)
the most influential factors were things such as parental attitude, (toys
play style,encouragement,discipline,etc.), school (especially sexist
language in textbooks), and television (advertising and lack of good role
models). Of course I am tracing backwards to pinpoint the origin of my own
sex-role stereotypes.
I think it is correct to say that the only hope for real equality
between the sexes exists for our children. It is so difficult to
"un-learn" behavior that has been reinforced for your entire life.
And many of the sex-role expectations are so subtle! However, I think
the most important theing is how the children percieve themselves
and their abilities and choces, and not necessarily how they are
seen by society.
- Kristin Boylan
--
Chris Boylan
{mgnetp | ihnp4 | uwvax}!dicomed!boylanmark@umcp-cs.UUCP (05/20/84)
Note that I am not suggesting that the child would be unaware of hes
sex. (Although that is another variable that might be considered)
I think that ignorance of one's own sex would be absolutely essential
to this experiment, unless one had very very good control over every
minute of the child's environment. If a child knows she is a boy,
that makes a difference in how she interprets his experiences.
Keeping a child ignorant of hes sex would involve a lot of lying.
"Why don't I have a penis like yours daddy?" would have to be answered
with great care if one could not say "because you have a vagina like
your mommy".
As far as possible we have tried to raise our children non-sexistly.
Clothes and even answers to noisy onlookers about sex were handled
uniformly. But, about age 3, girls want to wear dresses ("I don't
LIKE pants!") and boys, I presume, want to wear cowboy hats
(or something like that). They know what they are, and they have eyes.
We are now seeing a switch back in our
6 year old, to where she is comfortable in any clothing combination,
but bluejeans are her favorite. I fear it is not any non-sexist
upbringing on our part which has brought about this change, but
Jordache commercials.
Sigh.
--
Spoken: Mark Weiser ARPA: mark@maryland
CSNet: mark@umcp-cs UUCP: {seismo,allegra}!umcp-cs!markmark@umcp-cs.UUCP (05/20/84)
We have found useful discussing with our girls the sexism in
the society around them. I explained to Nicole, when she
was about 4, that once upon a time everyone thought that
men were better than women. But they were wrong, (just
like the earth being flat, not being able to fly, or whatever
other examples I think of at the moment). But not everyone
knows that that idea was wrong. Some people still think
that men are better than women (even some woment think that),
and that is why (a) that woman is dressed like that, (b) that
man is saying those things, (c) whatever.
Nicole now can identify sexist situations and actions herself quite
well. She seems to take the attitude towards them that while
she may want to wear a pretty dress (read flimsy) dress like
someone on TV, that will not limit HER, and she'll always know
that she is as good as anyone.
The concern: sometimes I think she says certain things because
she knows I want to hear them. Like: Daddy, I want to be a
cocktail waitress AND an astronaut.
Sigh.
--
Spoken: Mark Weiser ARPA: mark@maryland
CSNet: mark@umcp-cs UUCP: {seismo,allegra}!umcp-cs!marksaquigley@watmath.UUCP (Sophie Quigley) (05/21/84)
Along the same line of thought, I have always wondered what would happen if
little boys did not "have" to learn that they are "different" from their
mothers at a very young age. It seems to be an accepted view in the
psychology world that little boys "should" find out that they are different
or else......
I just wonder what the else would be. I have a hunch that the world might
be all the better for it.
Sophie Quigley
...!{clyde,ihnp4,decvax,allegra}!watmath!saquigleyward@hao.UUCP (05/22/84)
[]
Trying to bring up a child so that it doesn't know its own gender
is an experiment that I suggest only for such as those who are
currently professing no love for their children. There is at least as
much chance that sexual differences are genetically endowed as other.
The only way to find out would be to run a series of controlled
scientific experiments of the type that was so popular in Nazi Germany.
To run the risk of severly damaging your children to prove a political
point strikes me as monsterous.
If enough of this kind of thing goes on, there will no doubt soon be
a rash of law suits brought by offspring against their parents, claiming
damages for the way they were raised.
--
Michael Ward, NCAR/SCD
UUCP: {hplabs,nbires,brl-bmd,seismo,menlo70,stcvax}!hao!ward
BELL: 303-497-1252
USPS: POB 3000, Boulder, CO 80307trb@masscomp.UUCP (05/23/84)
I don't have no kids, I are one. The notion of "non-sexist upbringing" disturbs me. The notion of a society without "discrimination" disturbs me. The problem that these notions are probably trying to deal with is that of unfair treatment in society. The problems that they cause are a denial of reality. To not discriminate, is to force upon children the specious idea that they are all the same. "No pink, no blue, no penis, no breasts. No dresses, no cowboys and indians." If only I indoctrinate them properly, then they'll grow up into the kind of grown-ups I like. I can accept that men and women are both good and important and wonderful. I can't accept that they are both the same. I can't believe the kind of Skinnerian experiments some of the people in this discussion are suggesting. Consider that any child-rearing experiment that can be ruined by Jordache jeans commercials was probably ill-conceived to begin with. You wanna raise "good" children? Give them a warm and healthy environment in which to explore their every curiosity. Don't go scheming behind their backs to only expose them to your fascist ideals. If you feed your children an insipid line of crap, you will most likely wind up with insipid children. If you are lucky, you will wind up with children who resent your having abused them. I think that children brought up in a healthy setting will automatically shy away from the stereotypes you fear. I think I was brought up in a pretty healthy environment that way, my parents just let me do what I wanted, I don't know whether they dressed me in blue when I was little. I suppose they did, I suppose they were happy that their firstborn was a boy, I don't think it affected my upbringing terribly much. I wasn't raised to be a power hungry captain of industry, nor to play football, chase girls, drive a Trans-Am or any of that stuff. I was raised to follow my instincts, not my parents' instincts. I'm grateful for that. When I think about how to raise kids, I think about the people I admire, and I say to myself, "that's something to aspire to be." When I think of those admirable people, I can't imagine them being the fruit of such warped notions as have been suggested in this discussion on non-sexist child-rearing. There's a lot of provocative "bad stuff" in the world. Hatred of all sorts. You can shelter your children from it or you can teach your children that it exists but that it need not harm them if they know how to deal with it. Something like teaching your children about poisons. No, I'm not suggesting that you take your infant over to the Clorox. I am suggesting that when a child can understand the questions involved, you should explain ALL the pitfalls, and let the children work it out. Just because you are bigger than they are and you feed them, it doesn't mean that they have to think the way you do. Don't teach your children what to think, teach them to think. Andy Tannenbaum Masscomp Inc Westford MA (617) 692-6200 x274
riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (05/23/84)
While I don't agree with Andy Tannenbaum's assertion that trying to
give your children a non-sexist upbringing would necessarily be a
"fascist experiment", I do think that there is a kernel of truth to his
advice:
>> Don't teach your children what to think, teach them to think.
To which I might add that the best way to raise non-sexist kids might
be to be non-sexist yourself.
Children learn some amazing things from their parents, both good and
bad, without anyone realizing that there is any overt teaching going
on. Consider the case of my father: he was born in 1936 and grew up in
a very small town in northern Louisiana, a place and time where the
accepted norm was a deep and terrible racism. His parents were shocked
when he came back from college believing in integration and racial
equality. When they asked him where on earth he could have gotten such
absurd ideas, they couldn't understand his reply: he had learned not to
be a racist from t h e m . You see, racists though his parents were,
they had at least been kind to the blacks they came in contact with and
treated them with some basic dignity; as a child, my father had picked
up the kindness but not all of the racism.
Most of what your kids learn from you will be by example, not by
conscious instruction. If you want to raise good kids, maybe you
should start by doing what you can to clean up your own act; leave it
to their good sense to take it from there.
--- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.")
--- {ihnp4,seismo,gatech,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddlepc@hplabsb.UUCP (05/23/84)
Dave (and other kid-people), I, too, have given this non-sexist question some thought. My conclusion is that sexual identity is critical. A child needs a sense of sexual identity in the process of answering the question "Who am I?" The challenge, as I see it, is to put that sexual identity into perspective. (I.e., sexual identity isn't everything and it sure isn't a reasonable basis for discrimination.) The difficulty I have with my (very young) son, is to make him feel good about being a boy without somehow implying that it's BETTER/WORSE than being a girl...different, yes; better/worse, no. So, my dilemma is finding ways to acknowledge his gender and to help him to enjoy being a boy, without making it seem that being a boy is somehow a position of superiority/inferiority. (If I had a daughter, I would be doing EXACTLY the same things with her.) Patricia Collins hplabs
mason@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Mason) (05/24/84)
In partial reply to Andy Tannenbaum (Masscomp).
Some people do not seem to be aware that virtually everything children
see implies to them that men are better than women. I do not agree
that men are better than women; I DO agree that they are different,
and I think that difference is important. I was suggesting that
there must be some way to prevent other people from imposing their
(Communist?) viewpoint on my children. I can not own a television
and save them from that source of junk, but when they are 2 years
old and meet someone who, if the child is a boy will say: "Are you
going to be a computer scientist when you grow up?" or if the child
is a girl will say: "Are you going to be a nurse when you grow up or
just keep house?" there is not much I can do according to conventional
wisdom. My question was "Can I overcome this?" and "Will this help?"
I am very aware of what a negative parent can do to a person's self
image, as my wife is still struggling against that burden. But I
am also aware of the effect of this society on most children.
Obviously once the children are 5 or so, they will be able to discuss
these negative comments and we will hopefully be able to work things
through as they come up, but it is the first few years when they are
very easily influenced, but not able to reason well that concern me.
(Note the word Communist was intended as a humourous response to
ATs suggestion that considering men & women equal was fascist).
--
Usenet: {dalcs dciem garfield musocs qucis sask titan trigraph ubc-vision
utzoo watmath allegra cornell decvax decwrl ihnp4 uw-beaver}
!utcsrgv!mason Dave Mason, U. Toronto CSRG
CSNET: mason@Toronto
ARPA: mason%Toronto@CSNet-Relaybrp@ihuxm.UUCP (B.R. Priest) (05/24/84)
<..>
My view on this IMPORTANT subject is a simple one.
I try to impress upon my children the folowing:
Everyone is a person, all people have feelings, treat other
people's feelings as you would have them treat your own.
Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird" said it nicely:
'You've got to get into the other person's shoes and try
walking around in them for a while'.
Wish I'd said that.
Ben Priest
ATT Bell Labs
Naperville IL
ihnss!ihuxm
--
!ihuxm!brplaura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (05/25/84)
Dave, I don't see how you can predict that not telling your children what sex they are will achieve the effect you want. Just off hand, suppose the effect you got was: ``everybody else knows whether they are a boy or a girl and I don't because: a) I am stupid b) My parents are stupid c) My parents won't tell me, because: a) they don't know b) they are being mean to me c) they didn't notice.... Who knows what your children will think? If the idea that ``men are superior to women'' is truly as prevalent as you say, then unless you can isolate your children from everybody else they are bound to pick it up -- or at the very least that it is an important question. At that point, they will see their parents pretending that the question doesn't exist (or shouldn't exist) rather than seeing their parents facing a question which is (ironically enough) extremely important to them. Will this imply that the way to deal with situations where one believes that one is right despite overwhelming opinion to the contrary is to pretend that the other opinion does not exist? I don't know. I suspect that given a large enough sample set of ``experts'' you would get some who would be entirely in favour of your proposed scheme and some who would be vehemently opposed. I just don't think that enough is known about how people learn anything to make reasonable predictions at all. I also suspect that the tendancy to view all children as black boxes (raise them according to this magic formula and they will all turn out into predicted marvellous people) is rather naive. Heredity will count for something (how much, I don't know, and I don't know how to tell, but it does give you the basic equipment with which you explore the whole world, which is different from everybody else' in some way, except possibly in the case of twins) and a great deal of what will happen to your children will be a matter of chance that you really have no choice over at all. Perhaps it would be a better idea to teach your children how to overcome any conditioning that they do not want, and reasons why they should not want to believe that men are superior to women. I don't know how to teach ``how to resist conditioning'' except that it involves not adopting other people's beliefs as your own until you have thought of them and agreed that they are good independent of *who* thinks of them -- which isn't all that practical when the person whose beliefs are being examined either isn't around to be questioned or doesn't appreciate the questions. Of course this implies that Mom and Dad who are going to be around are going to have to give reasons for what they do and can't say that something is true: ``BECAUSE I SAID SO, THAT'S WHY!''. All of this sounds extremely reasonable, but then I remember when my little brother used to play `let's drive laura up the wall' which he accomplished by asking the same question (usually ``why'') to any answer you gave him for hours until I ran out of patience... However, it seems a more general solution than just trying to avoid sexist conditioning by counter-conditioning. Laura Creighton utzoo!laura ps. I suspect it would make explaining sex to your children a little awkward as well. -- Laura Creighton utzoo!laura "Not to perpetrate cowardice against one's own acts! Not to leave them in the lurch afterward! The bite of conscience is indecent" -- Nietzsche The Twilight of the Idols (maxim 10)